Sunil Mittal

Profile: Sunil Mittal CMD, Bharti NEW DELHI: Standing tall at the ET Awards '05 as recipient of the Businessleader of the Year honour, Sunil 'Bharti' Mittal disarmed the Mumbai crowd in his own typical way: "This is not just a recognition of the Bharti group. It's a grand applause for small towns that make India Inc what it is. " That's Mr Mittal for you, well-rooted and blunt. The most successful among the first generation entrepreneurs in the country, he took his first steps in...

NEW DELHI: Following Parliament's passing the Insurance Bill, Bharti Enterprises today said its foreign partner AXA will step up equity investment to 49 per cent in the joint venture. Bharti Enterprises and AXA have a 74:26 JV with Bharti holding the majority stake. The entity offers life and general insurance. "We can confirm that AXA will step up their equity investment to 49 per cent. Bharti will soon move the application to FIPB as per the new FDI guidelines,"...

NEW DELHI: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Monday said that the Bharti Group chairman and managing director Sunil Mittal has joined its board of trustees. Mr Mittal is the first Indian to join the board of this prestigious global think tank that has UN secretary general Kofi Annan, among its only three non-US board members.

They say the true test of a leader is that he leaves behind in other men the conviction to carry on. Corporate India's leaders have steered their ships through tumultuous change in the recent past, as new opportunities emerged, new technologies evolved and new markets opened up. They discarded past notions, imbibed fresh ideas, experimented with new concepts, took big risks. In the process, they reinvented the way India does business. Their stories are far from over, but there's much we...

BARCELONA: Taking on social networking giant Facebook's ambitious 'free internet' plans, telecom major Bharti Airtel chief Sunil Mittal has said the companies should do 'philanthropy' if they stop charging for mobile internet. Facebook has launched an 'internet.org' initiative under which users can access internet free of charge for select websites if they come through a partner telecom operator. Incidentally, Airtel Africa is one such partner for...

BARCELONA: Flush with an investment outlay of $ 3 billion a year on networks, telecom major Bharti Airtel plans to double its 4G network by next fiscal as it gears up to take on competition, including the much-awaited foray of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries group. "We have decided to roll out (4G). We have 20,000 base station now, in March, and we will be doing another 20,000 next year," Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said here. Mittal...

NEW DELHI: As Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin arrives in India to pursue a possible bid for Hutch Essar, his existing Indian partner Sunil Mittal on Wednesday said disengagement talks between the two companies has not yet started, but he may meet the India-born official of the British telecom major. No, we have not started any disengagement talk... We have not come to that point as yet, Mittal told reporters on the sidelines of Pravasi Bharatiya Divas here. They (Vodafone)

The CEO of the Vodafone Group, Arun Sarin, met PM Manmohan Singh on Friday and expressed his company's commitment to invest in India. Apart from informing the premier of Vodafone's investment in Bharti, he also emphasised his company's backing for providing connectivity to remote areas of the country. During his meeting with Singh at the PMO, Mr Sarin was accompanied by Sunil Mittal, chairman and group MD of Bharti. The Vodafone chief briefed the PM about the global telecom scenario,...

Bharti Airtel is well prepared for the upcoming spectrum auctions having bought fall back airwaves earlier, but the focus will be to win back its existing airwaves, Chairman Sunil Mittal said. Speaking to ET's Anandita Singh Mankotia in Barcelona, Mittal said that the telco was prepared for competition from the likes of Reliance Jio Infocomm. He admitted that Airtel may have overpaid for Zain while entering Africa or underestimated the challenges, but expects...

BARCELONA: Telecom major Bharti Airtel today pitched for a hike in mobile and data tariffs, at least in small quantities, as it gears for the biggest ever spectrum auction beginning tomorrow. "Tariff has to go up. The good news is that we are talking about very small tariffs raises. In last three years, only 3 paise have gone up. In a competitive market, markets will ultimately determine," Bharti Enterprises Chairman Sunil Mittal said here at the ...

Sunil Mittal, chairman and group CEO of Bharti Enterprises , is a regular at Davos . Sentiment on India this time is much better than in the past, he told ET Now's Supriya Shrinate in an interview. Edited excerpts: How different is the mood as far as India is concerned? Definitely much more upbeat. Last few years, to be honest, have been not so bright for India. After having done very successful campaigns in 2008, 2010,...

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi , the man who's not just leading the effort to Make in India but has promised to remake India, will lead a global star cast of speakers for the two-day Economic Times Global Business Summit . So, book the dates: January 16-17. Note the venue: Hotel Taj, New Delhi. And get ready for some of the sharpest insights on the most critical questions of our times. ET, India's...

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has quashed a March 19, 2013, order of the 2G special court that had summoned Bharti Chairman Sunil Mittal and Essar V-C Ravi Ruia as accused to face trial in the excess spectrum allocation case, in a ruling that is sure to cheer up industry at a time some business leaders are facing criminal charges stemming from the alleged coal and telecom scams. The duo had been charged with criminal conspiracy to...

NEW DELHI: The special 2G court today fixed January 12 for hearing a corruption case related to allocation of additional spectrum during NDA rule in 2002 in which Bharti Cellular CMD Sunil Mittal , Essar Group promoter Ravi Ruia and others have been summoned as accused. Special CBI Judge O P Saini fixed the matter for January 12 after the counsel appearing for accused said that Supreme Court has reserved its verdict on the pleas filed by Mittal...

NEW DELHI: The CBI on Wednesday opposed Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal's petition in the Supreme Court , seeking to quash summons issued against him by a lower court in a case related to alleged irregularities in an allotment of spectrum more than a decade ago. The agency's lawyer, KK Venugopal, told the court that a government decision taken in 2002 to allot airwaves had helped boost investor demand for the company's shares during its...